The death toll for the Eastern Cape bus crash stood at 22, including five children, police announced on Wednesday. The bus — which belongs to a private bus company — careened down a 200m embankment into a river near the town of Cedarville on Tuesday. During the course of the day, there were conflicting reports of how many people had been killed, ranging from 20 to 30.
JP Pietersen’s lack of form in the Super 14 season has cost him a place in the Springbok squad that was named in Somerset West on Wednesday. The Sharks’ World Cup-winning wing failed to score a try in the 2008 series after he finished the 2007 Super 14 season as the leading try scorer.
The United Nations’s top human rights official on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of the killing of opposition political activists in Zimbabwe. ”It is hard to get a very precise picture of the full range of the violence, or the exact number of politically motivated extra-judicial killings,” said Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the South African Police Service are hard at work repairing their relationship ahead of a planned merger with the Scorpions, NPA acting head Mokotedi Mpshe said on Wednesday. ”We’re focusing primarily on salvaging whatever relations there are,” Mpshe told reporters in Johannesburg.
Kumba’s chief executive officer Ras Myburgh will resign from his position to begin a secondment with Eskom for two years. ”He will be assuming the important responsibility of advising the utility on its long-term coal sourcing strategy, and its implementation for all of Eskom’s power stations, ” Kumba said in a statement.
Former Democratic Republic of Congo leader Jean-Pierre Bemba on Wednesday asked Belgian authorities to release him and vowed to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) that ordered his arrest for alleged war crimes. He was arrested on Saturday in a suburb of the Belgian capital, Brussels, on an ICC warrant.
Kenya President Mwai Kibaki said on Wednesday that his country has learned its lesson from post-election violence and promised to focus on improving the economy. Kenya, long considered one of Africa’s most stable countries, suffered weeks of political violence that claimed at least 1 500 lives after the disputed December general elections.
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said his company was still holding talks with Yahoo!, although no longer about efforts to take over the internet giant. Ballmer, speaking during a conference hosted by the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> on Tuesday, recalled that Microsoft had dropped its bid to buy Yahoo! after Yahoo! rejected its takeover offer.
Murder accused Andrew Jordaan on Wednesday closed his case without calling any further witnesses to support his claims of innocence in the murder of seven-year-old Sheldean Human. This was after the defence counsel earlier indicated that Jordaan wanted to call a further witness, but closed his case without further explanation.
The Pretoria High Court on Wednesday turned down the so-called Waterkloof Four’s application for leave to appeal their convictions. The court earlier refused to overturn the conviction and sentence of the four, who were found guilty of murder and assault and sentenced to 12 years in prison.